sparrow
by mosske
Summary: Is this your cocoon or your coffin, boy? genji-centric with hints of emergenji


_sparrow_

a/n: deleted and reposted as i realize that before it was far too short, even for me. might do one for each of the characters, as i love them all equally.

* * *

It's not the pain that wakes him, but the pulsing and beeping of machines; the whirring and clicking of gears, the sound of metal grinding and grating— rough edges being smoothed and refined until they shine like glass. He sees his reflection briefly through eyes half lidded, then closes them in disgust— and the gentle singing of a woman he doesn't know in a language he cannot place, which calls to him like a siren on the sea.

She places a cool hand on his forehead and his mind, addled with medication and weariness and grief, processes only one word—sleep, he thinks it is—and relaxes, sinking into the strange symphony of synthetics and allows it to rock him to sleep like a metallic lullaby.

* * *

He stirs only briefly to the feeling of someone leaning over him. Not the siren woman, this is a man's breathing—has his brother come back to finish what began so long ago? He cannot open his eyes nor discern the man's appearance through the red veins of closed lids, but please, this time, let it be quick—and a man's voice asks,

"Is this hospital bed your cocoon or your coffin, boy?"

Footsteps retreat into the black beyond and he doesn't know. He follows them into the abyss.

* * *

His joints creak when he moves, much like an old man's and much like something else entirely. "Entirely normal," Dr. Ziegler tells him, in that casual and caring way of hers when he finally dares to mention it. She no longer sounds like a siren, he notices. "New parts and such—think of it as something similar to a house settling. Soon, you'll scarcely notice a thing." Genji looks down at his squeaking joints and titanium tendons and the synthetic skin that lies atop it all, holding it together like friction holds a house of cards. This will never be normal, he thinks.

Normal is feeling the sun on your skin and the gentle brush of the cherry trees in spring; the kiss of a beautiful woman on your cheek and the harsh sting of her slap. Normal is the heat radiating off of an angry brother and then the sense of peace and family when he slings his arm around your shoulder and you laugh and smile and shrug off the fight, whatever it may be. Normal is everything he was and nothing he is.

Normal is gone.

He cannot help but notice this.

She tightens a bolt on his back and the pressure pushes down on his shoulders. "Yes. Perhaps you're right." Is all he can bring himself to say.

The lie tastes bitter in his mouth.

* * *

Revenge, he learns far later, is just as bitter.

* * *

"Your latest tests are looking good, Genji." He perches on the examination table, no longer able to feel the cold metal biting into his skin, as he often did as a child. No longer feeling anything. Dr. Ziegler sits in a rolling chair, just a little below him. Legs crossed, blonde hair thrown back in a sloppy bun—she overslept again today, he thinks, and a slight smile crosses his face beneath the mask—and a pair of reading glasses slightly askew on her nose. "Reflexes are up, and you've almost burned through Lena's track records— a fact that has her more than a little steamed, might I add." She chuckles.

"Only almost?" He teases and she laughs again.

"If you're in such a rush to break them, perhaps I'll see if Winston can't outfit you with a chrono-accelerator as well."

The smile withers; she can't see it die, but she senses its absence. Her own goes to join it as she searches for the right words; tiptoeing around landmines she build on his skin and in his mind. The technological elephant in the room. "Genji, I know this has been a difficult transition for you—"

"I am fine, Doctor."

"If you're having trouble adjusting, there are specialists on the base you could speak to." She presses firmly, refusing to let up.

"I am fine, Doctor. Really." He repeats, emphasizes. She does not relent.

"You never remove your mask except to eat, which you do alone, far away from the other agents. You vanish without a word for hours on end and when we do find you, you throw yourself at your training like a—a—"

"Like a robot?" He is teasing again, but no longer playfully. Frost fills the air between them and her cheeks flush stark red in their social ice age; indignation fuels their fire.

"Like a man trying to pretend he isn't one anymore." She says hotly.

The nettles in her words prick the tin man, and he drops down from the table to stand before her. She stares back up at the glowing green visor; unwavering, unperturbed and unafraid. For that brief moment, he is shamed; his mirrors are covered. He cannot bear to look at himself as she does.

He looks at her instead. At the messy hair he adores, at the crooked glasses he wants to fix, at the red cheeks that make him grin most days, but not this one. At the hands and heart he could hold, were he not a suit of armor where a human being should be.

"I know full well what I am, Dr. Ziegler." He says, softly.

"And what is that?" She challenges.

"I am fine."

* * *

The bitterness grows.

* * *

The Omnic Threat quelled, he departs.

* * *

"I do not know what I am anymore." The icy winds of Nepal swirl around them as they stand just outside the gates; the sparrow and the monk. "I do not know why I am here."

"And what do you know?" The monk's voice is flat and soothing; hypnotic in its simplicity.

He hesitates, casting about for the words and feeling them slip through the net of his mind. Images flash behind his eyes; his father, his mother, his brother. Angela. The unknown man, that first night in the hospital; _is this your cocoon or your coffin, boy?_ "… I know I am alone."

A hand lifts the visor from his face and he feels the cold like it's the first time. His face freezes and ice stings his cheeks and his eyes. Wet heat dampens the corners.

If an Omnic could smile, he feels this one would. "Not anymore." Zenyatta says, and for once, the sparrow believes.


End file.
